


Ill Luck at Cards

by fandomfan



Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2019-01-05 01:11:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12179973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfan/pseuds/fandomfan
Summary: A hopelessly doomed AU full of miserable pining and Jack Shaftoe being uncharacteristically Responsible and Dutiful and maybe even (horrors) In Love With A Gurl.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Although Jack Shaftoe and Jack Sparrow might just be the best-matched pair of fictional characters ever (for more convincing of that, go read everything by [ImpOfPerversity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity)), when this fandom was alive and kicking, there were all kinds of alternative possibilities posted by we band of devoted fans.
> 
> This is one vision that came from the prompt:
>
>> a hopelessly doomed AU full of miserable pining and Jack Shaftoe being uncharacteristically Responsible and Dutiful and maybe even (horrors) In Love With A Gurl

Anamaria has always wondered how Jack Sparrow's heart stays so firmly locked up inside his chest when he's so quick to let everything else fly free.  His words, his wits, his arms and legs, his hair and his trinkets and his layers upon layers of fabric; they all flit and sway and dart here and there like the swift little bird he's chosen for an icon.  And when he comes a-knockin' at her cabin door in the dark, as he does now and then, he makes free of his hands and his mouth and his panther's body and saturates her senses with storms of sweet, hot pleasure.  
  
But she doesn't fool herself into believing that when he coaxes her with flick'ring fingers and a soft _C'mon, Ana, that's it, my beautiful girl_ in her ear that he's offering up anything so fancy as love.  She knows that when they're both in their transports, and he groans _Fuck, I c'd lose myself in your cunt_ and looks at her with those sea-at-night eyes intense and aglow, his passions don't extend way deep down into the inside-most core of his inside-most self.  
  
It's why the 'rangement they've got works, really.  She don't love Jack Sparrow (she's better sense than that), and Jack Sparrow don't love her (he made it all clear when they first took this up, back way back).  But they share a love of his ship, this _Black Pearl_ that Anamaria claims she'll leave one day soon, though they both know different.  Aye, they have this girl between them.  This girl and a shared respect and a head for the sea and a lust that comes fiery and fierce and at times unawares.  
  
So when they've had a hard time of taking a new prize, or they've battled through a storm, or a crewman's been lost, or sometimes just for a weight in the loins of one or t'other, Anamaria or her Captain'll tap quick and quiet at the other's door, and they'll slake each other's aches as the ship pitches and yaws beneath 'em.  
  
It's plain truth to say Jack slakes her mighty fine.  And her, him.  
  
Only not tonight.  
  
Tonight, the _Pearl_ 's moored in the Lower Pool, since her crew's been unloading some choice c'modities that're best fenced in the nautickal areas of a big place like London where engraved initials and VOC stamps can be erased and goods can be swallowed up in the land-bound sea of trade.  
  
It was in a grubby Wapping stew earlier today, conducting just such business, that Anamaria (as second for her Captain) watched Jack Sparrow's face pale and his breath falter as the fence from Mr. Knockmealdown ducked his tall blond head through the door and stopped short, silent, and stock-still, without even sitting to open negotiations.  
  
Anamaria's never seen Jack so discomfited as he was staring at the other man in that musty little room.  He's quick and fearless, is her Captain, and he sure as Hell don't let on when someone's got him wrong-footed.  But this afternoon, he did nothing but swallow and look at that fence like he was a poisoned banquet laid out for Jack's starving benefit.  And then he bowed his head and touched his hand to his hat and left the room, quick as that.  
  
Now, Anamaria's sailed with Jack Sparrow a good long while, and she knows that it's often best to just follow his lead in these things.  So, she told that feller quick-like that they'd be back same time tomorrow, and hurried off after her Captain.  He'd lost himself in the crowds of flower- and faggot-sellers, though, and Jack Sparrow's not found 'less he wants to be, so Anamaria took herself off back to the _Pearl_.  Jack'd come back when he was good an' ready.  
  
And he had.  Not until after dark, stinkin' more than usual of rum and with his clothes crusted in dried muck, but back he'd come.  Straight to Anamaria's little cabin, by the look of it.  Tapping at the door like usual, and then ( _un_ like usual) bearing her down to the floor under a fierce onslaught of kissing; fumbling immediately at the plackets of both their trowsers.  
  
She'd come to expect surprises from Jack, to be sure, 'specially in his bedsport, but he'd always provided her all the entertaining she wanted or asked for or demanded before he fucked her.  He'd revelled, in fact, and prided in all the things he could do to her 'til she was juicy and achin' for him to slide up inside.  Tonight he'd been a man possessed, kissing too hard and pawing too rough and in it for himself and not a nit for her.  
  
"Jack Sparrow!" she'd snapped at him, with a sharp knee brought up warningly between his legs.  "This ain't no way to treat a lady!"  
  
First he'd drunkenly laughed, "You ain't no lady, Ana, my love," but she'd pressed that knee harder up and told him,  
  
"Well I'm sure the closest you got!  And don't you 'Ana my love' me.  You want to use a woman, go find one onshore who likes the colour o' your coin."  
  
He'd come to at that, and looked sorrowful and a mite soberer.  Then he'd slid himself down and apologised prettily with his splendid, clever mouth, albeit without much in the way of words.  
  
Funny, though.  When she'd accepted his penance and undertaken to be nice in similarly oral fashion, he was limp as canvas in the doldrums.  Nevermind that he'd told her and showed to her over an' over how the taste of her made him hard; and nevermind her headjobs'd been known to have him weak in minutes.  Tonight, for all he writhed and moaned and seemed so bent on finding his pleasure with her, the sails remained slack.  
  
So here they are.  Anamaria's pulled Jack up, distracted and miserable, clear as clear.  She's undressed 'em both and laid 'em both on her cot and wrapped herself around Jack's back, holding tight.  Because something's amiss with him, and he's a man she cares about; but also as a caution, because she don't know what he'll do when she asks,  
  
"Who's that fence, Jack?"  
  
He goes rigid in her arms, and she's glad of her hold that won't let him wriggle away.  Stupidly, he tries, "Dunno what you mean."  
  
"You can't play that game with me," she scolds into his hair, but nice and tame and care-full.  "I saw you see that man today, and I saw how you came in here tonight wantin' to forget, and I saw how you can't get it up, which ain't never, NEVER happened 'fore now.  So, who is he to throw Jack Sparrow so far off the mark?"  
  
Jack sighs.  " _Captain_ Jack Sparrow, woman. _Captain_."  
  
She can't help but smile, but he's not escaping this one.  For nothin' else, she's powerful curious now.  "You ain't Captain in here like this.  Not when I'm holdin' you like I's your mam.  C'mon now.  Who is he?  You'll bust if you don't let it out."  
  
Jack inhales deep and out slow.  And then he tells her, in a small, naked voice she's never heard from her brash and dashing Captain, "His name's Jack Shaftoe, and he's the man I love."   
  
For a minute, she's sure she ain't heard right.  
  
Then Jack shudders once, like a dog, head on down to feet.  And he says, his words full of faraway, "Aye, you heard me.  He's my love.  Only one I've had.  Only one I'll ever have."  
  
"But–" Anamaria breaks in, confused.  "Why don't you–"  
  
"Leave it, Ana," Jack sighs.  He sounds a thing Anamaria's never heard from him before.  He sounds resigned.  "It's a tale long done.  You'll go back tomorrow and negotiate an agreement.  And the day after that, we'll sail the fuck away from London."  
  
Sad like this is something Anamaria's never seen from Jack.  He don't show his sad.  'Cept here it is now, certain sure; Jack Sparrow's sad.  His grief.  His misery.  And she hates it; and hates how it brings low this man who should be shining and fine and a prize in anyone's eyes, man or woman.  
  
She tightens her arms round his shoulders.  She can't help the protective fiery urge in her that wants to fix this somber woe out from Jack's life.  "Why'nt you go tomorrow.  Talk to him.  Surely you ain't seen him in years, have you?  Surely you–"  
  
"Leave it be, I said."  And though the words are sharp, there's no snap to 'em.  No energy at all.  
  
"But..." Anamaria trails off, searchingly, but there's no way 'round this but to say it.  "But don't he want you?"  
  
Jack laughs, a brittle, bitter trill.  "No, he surely doesn't."  
  
"But, well not to put too fine a point on it, but _everyone_ wants you."  
  
Jack makes a rueful sound that's at least got a whit of warmth in it, and he rolls over to face her.  "Nearly true."  He puts a hand to her cheek the way he might pat a friendly child.  "But not true where it counts, eh?  Cruel an' ironic, ain't it?"  
  
There are some facts of Anamaria's life that she takes completely for granted.  The sea is wet.  Sun-up's in the east.  Everyone wants Jack Sparrow.  "You sure 'bout that?  I mean, you ever asked him?"  
  
"I have," Jack sighs.  "And he did once.  But no more.  Leastways not as much as he wants his wife."  
  
"That's it, Jack!" Anamaria declares.  She sits up and snatches her shirt from the floor.  She tugs it over her head and pulls Jack up to sit facing her before demanding, "You're going to tell this story to me, and you're going to tell it to me now."  
  
He favours her with a shade of his flickering smile, which means they're at least tacking in the right direction.  "No one knows the tale but me and him.  Jack Sparrow and Jack Shaftoe.  Two of a kind but never again a pair."  
  
He shakes his head clear.  
  
"All right.  You want the tale of Jacks Sparrow and Shaftoe?"  
  
She nods and puts a look on her face that she hopes shows as determined and hides her shocked curiosity.  
  
And Jack Sparrow seems to grasp gratefully at the line she's thrown him, the chance to play storyteller.  He sweeps his hair off his face and draws a faint smattering of his gleam and dazzle about him; and he tells her the story.  
  
  
{}{}{}  
  
  
He wasn't yet eighteen (or so he reckoned—gypsies never were much good for writing these things down) when he first stumbled into London, footsore and penniless and glaucous with road dust.  But for all that, Jack (who wasn't yet Sparrow, let alone Captain, let alone sea-faring) was as giddily excited as any youth ever was to see the City. London Town.  
  
The thought of half a million souls living all the year round in one place was boggling to a boy who'd lived his whole life traveling town to town with his clan.  He gaped and stared and ogled through his first urban quarter mile; variously fought off, ran from, and talked his way out of half a dozen insalubrious propositions during the second; and by the end of the third, was tail over tit in love.  
  
It came to pass like so.  
  
London was a gaudily inviting new benefactress, and Jack was keen to take her for ev'ry last penny's worth.  But even that last one was a penny more'n he had on his person, and neither food nor drink nor the more entertaining sorts of company came gratis.  So Jack scanned the crowd for someone whose purse looked to be weighing him down in unpleasant fashion, with a mind to assisting the poor fellow free of such a taxing load.  
  
Ah!  The walrus in the velvet-striped weskit was just the thing.  
  
But it seemed those beardy tusks were too universally tempting a lure, for just as Jack jostled into him "by accident, sorry sir" from the right, someone else jostled him from the left.  The squashed odobene cottoned to his coins' peril and waddled rather quickly away, leaving Jack sprawled in the street muck glaring up at his rival cutpurse.  
  
In the moment of that first glance, all his withering retorts died a withering death in his throat.  No older than himself, Jack figured, but broader in the shoulder and longer in the leg (and the arm and the lean, tapering, perfect torso).  The fellow had a strong, square jaw and straight, dark brows over eyes like that Caribbean Sea that the farther-traveled of Jack's people were always on about.  And topped off with a messy blond queue that simply begged for Jack's hands to rough it further.  
  
Jack swallowed hard.  Look at him.   _Look_ at _him_!   
  
"Who d'you think you are, dippin' into a pocket Jack Shaftoe's marked as his own?" demanded the apparent and glorious Jack Shaftoe.  "There's an order to these things!"  
  
"Oh?" Jack managed, but no more than that, for his racing pulse seemed to've blocked any further intelligence from making it past his lips.  
  
"Since you're obviously not from these parts," lectured Shaftoe, glowering fearsomely at Jack, "I'll tell you what that order is.  'Tis you staying the fuck away from my marks.  Hear?"  
  
Jack did hear.  Heard Shaftoe's fierce insistence and the promise of violence not far b'neath it.  Heard his rough London intonations and couldn't help but wishfully transpose them into sounds decidedly less polysyllabic and a great deal more amorous.  
  
"D'you speak English there, outlander?"  
  
At no answer from Jack, Shaftoe belaboured his point with "Parlay voo fronsay?", followed quickly by "Sprecken zee doytch?" and a nonsensical patter of a query that ended with "zargon".  
  
Jack fell farther for such a belligerent polyglot.  
  
No shy monolinguist himself, Jack mustered wits enough to respond with, "Yes.  Oui.  Jah.  What the fuck's that last one?" as he stood.  "And I don't think he counts as your mark if I'm the one succeeded in getting at his coin."  He triumphantly held up the purse formerly owned by The Man Who'd Brought Him Jack Shaftoe.  
  
Shaftoe glanced at it, swiftly and appraisingly, then back at Jack, swift and appraising still, but with a degree more respect than a moment ago.  "He's the mark of whoever's got the most off him, and my take beats yours by at least half a pound."  
  
He smugly dangled a rather impressive watch from his long, blunt fingers.  
  
Jack tipped his head, as one acknowledging a Surpassing Stratagem.  "You're right, Mr. Shaftoe.  He was clearly your mark.  And being as you so thoroughly out-sneaked me in liberating such wealth from him, you surely won't say no to buying me a drink in convivial acknowledgment of your superiority."  
  
Shaftoe grinned, displaying a crooked tooth and a dimple (which conspired to rob Jack of a beat of his heart), and nodded.  "All right then.  Wouldn't want anyone 'ccusing me of lacking in fairness or upstanding moral character."  
  
"Heavens forfend!" Jack swore, smiling and smitten.  "I'm Jack, as well.  Jack Gypcian or Jack Czigany or Jack Ababda, as you like.  But plain Jack'll do fine."  
  
"Then plain Jack it'll be," said Shaftoe, amiably.  "For I'll not have you takin' my name and highfalutin' it with all your fancy words."  
  
He smiled broad and friendly, quarrel forgotten, and threw an arm around the shoulders of plain Jack, who was, by that time, hopelessly, irrevocably, almightily in love.  
  
  
[][][]  
  
  
The riotously drunken evening that followed resulted in the loss (via gambling at cards) of Shaftoe's purloined timepiece; a rip-roaring argument (via the discovery and disapproval of Shaftoe's less-than-perfect less-than-honest card playing—disapproval by others, of course, not by Jack, himself no novice to cheating at games of chance); a clutch of bruises (via the fists of the disapproving fellows); and a friendship between the two Jacks made fast by the universal agglutinate of fighting at another's back.  
  
From that day on through the months that followed, they were rarely apart.  Shaftoe shewed Jack the ways and byways of London, taught him the basics of defencing, and gave him the genuine and surprising pleasure of a companion whose quick wit and talent for mischief equalled his own.  
  
Jack, for his part, significantly improved Shaftoe's cardsharpery, offered general instructions for living on the road in a variety of climes, and regaled Shaftoe with stories 'pon stories (not all of 'em fabricated) of gypsy life, for Shaftoe, Vagabond though he professed to be, had never voyaged further from London than the Harz mountains (which might count as far to a citified coxcomb—Jack was wrestled to the ground for the nickname—but hardly to one whose people wandered whole continents).  
  
They snuck into noblemen's stables to bunk down in the warm straw. They lifted fine ladies' _étuis_ and sold 'em to whores.  In short, they involved themselves in any number of illicit œconomic endeavours, thereby cheating and fighting and making merry their way through life.  And though Shaftoe never gave sign of seeing nor of returning Jack's more fervent regards (at least no sign Jack could observe, and he spent a very great deal of his time observing Jack Shaftoe), Jack couldn't bring himself to regret anything about the glory of his comrogue or how they fitted each other like a pair of boots from the King's own souter.  
  
It was flush with this very glory and fine-fittingness (and a fat sack of newly liberated coin) that Jack and Jack found themselves lurching down a muddy lane one evening, singing something bawdily drunken.  
  
_Kiss'd her once, and I kissed her twice,_  
And we were wondrous merryyyyyyy  
  
"Jack," Shaftoe slurred.  
  
"Aye?"  
  
"What say on this fine night, we make wondrous merry ourselves, eh?"  
  
Jack froze.  Shaftoe, his arm being companionably laid across Jack's shoulders, stumbled to a stop beside him.

 

  


 

"What sort of wondrous merriment is it to be, then?"

 

  


 

"What sort d'you think?" Shaftoe asked, as though 'twere the most obvious of matters.  "The sort the song says.  The lusty sort.  The sort you and me should get up to soon's we can."

 

  
"You and me... You want to... You want a fuck?"   _From me, Jack?  You can't really mean from me.  Please to God mean that you want a fuck from me_.  
  
"Mm.  It's been near a damn fortnight!  My stones are like... like stones."  Shaftoe found this exceedingly amusing.  
  
Jack's ale-sozzled brain persisted in its round'n'round of _Shaftoe_ and _fucking_ and _fucking_ and _Shaftoe_.   _Shaftoe fucking_.  Or, oh Christ on a goddamn cross, _fucking Shaftoe_.  
  
"Y'know," he started, cautiously.  "I'd– I could– I'd let you–"  
  
But his offer was cut short by guffaws from Shaftoe beside him.  "Haw!   Not you, you dolt!  I don't mean jockin' _you_!  Jockin' Jack.  Hah!"  And Shaftoe dissolved again into peals of bibulous laughter over his own cleverness, while Jack stood by, glad for the dark that hid his red face and protrusive trowsers.  
  
"I mean a girl, mate," wheezed Shaftoe after taking a moment to calm himself.  "We could get us a girl" (he jingled the bag of coins) "and take 'er together, cou'nt we?  Pair of Jacks, that's us.  Scrappin' together and thievin' together and fuckin' together, eh?"  
  
Jack groaned and hoped Shaftoe'd take it to be a groan of anticipatory frustration.  Which it was.  Just not the sort Shaftoe'd be thinking.

 

  


  
What a horrifickally enticing notion.  To fuck _with_ Shaftoe if he couldn't fuck the man himself directly.  To be there, right there, and see those blue eyes hot with desire.  To watch Shaftoe's muscles strain and his skin sweat and to hear him pant and beg and grunt and moan in his ecstasy.  Would he whisper lewd and dirty words?  Would he cry aloud in release?  Would he fuck with half the vigour of his fights?  
  
Oh _yes_.  Jack was sure Shaftoe would do all these and more.  And though it wasn't how Jack would have chosen to combine the two (Shaftoe and sex), the lure of being in bed with this man, fucking; of baring his own skin and taking his own pleasure and for one night not playing at being unaffected by Jack Shaftoe's body...  It was not a thing Jack would pass up.  
  
"Aye.  Let's," he said.  "For what lass'd say no to a Pair of Jacks?"  
  
  
[][][]  
  
  
He was right.  For no sooner'd he and Shaftoe caromed their way into Mother Williams's knock-shop and made known their intentions than a bevy of variously- and partially-clothed girls made known their own individual amenabilities to the plan.  
  
Shaftoe assured Jack that Flora was the one who'd best serve, as it were.  And the smiling dark-haired harlot who presented herself upon summons was pretty enough; though, admittedly, Jack's habitual standards regarding human beauty (see one Shaftoe-comma-Jack) were a secondary concern beside the primary of being in his altogether and _in adiaceo delicto_ with a similarly unclad Shaftoe.  
  
Jack did owe credit to Flora, however, for skillfully managing the details in such a way that, in very little time at all, he was not only bare amid the rucked sheets with Jack Shaftoe in full-bore carnality, but was sliding his yard into her warm and friendly cunt, even as Shaftoe leant back 'gainst the headboard and hissed at his prick's envelopment inside her arse.  
  
And there, when Jack dared look away from Flora, was naked, beautiful, animal Jack Shaftoe, a goddamn Adonis with his hair sweat-dark and affixed in tendrils to his face and neck; his shoulders bunching and the cords in his throat straining as he put it to the girl on his lap.  There, the muscles in his belly standing out clear and sharp.  There, the guttural sound of his reaction to his own short, driving thrusts.  And _there_ , oh heavenly fuck, _there_ was the feel, inside the girl's body, of Jack Shaftoe's prick rubbing 'gainst Jack's own, with only a thin wet wall between 'em.  
  
Jack screwed his eyes shut and imagined himself fucking into Shaftoe this way.  Hot and tight like this, only Shaftoe'd be hotter and tighter.  Jack groaned.  He'd always had a talented imagination.  
  
Shaftoe moaned an answer, and Jack opened his eyes to the wondrous sight of Shaftoe's own blue ones, looking not at the girl, but over her shoulder at Jack.  At the place where Jack's cock was shifting into and out of her quim; and then sliding up Jack's body with... yes, with greedy interest... and up again to meet Jack's own (astonished and pleasure-fogged) gaze.  
  
The covetous burn in Shaftoe's stare was unmistakable, and Jack was no match for't.  He came in a rush, soundlessly crying out their common name, and a mere moment later, felt Shaftoe's prick twitch in the girl's arse and raised his eyes to see Shaftoe's face a mask of rapture and surprise and his mouth move in a shape that might have been _Jack_.


	2. Chapter 2

To Jack's horrified dismay, Shaftoe had barely regained his breath when he scrambled violently out of bed, jammed his breeches and boots on, and fled the room, grabbing the rest of his clothing in a jumble.  
  
Jack struggled to follow, and was held back, surprisingly, by Flora's hands clamped round his arm.  
  
"Let him go, love," she coaxed.  "He won't go far.  Just needs to sort his head out."  
  
"But he– He– He was–"  
  
Flora laughed.  "He he he was, indeed.  But a man don't always like to find he wants another man so."  She lay back on the bed, stretching luxuriantly.  "You give him some time and he'll be back to you.  Sooner'n he'll be back to me, that's for sure.  And a damn shame it is, too.  For me.  For you... well, I suspect a number of good nights are in your none-too-far-off future."  
  
Jack rescinded all the unkind things he'd ever thought about Flora.  Rescinded them, and upgraded her, too, from passably attractive to ravishingly gorgeous.  Really, it was the least he could do for a woman who'd brought about the discovery of and then confirmed the blissom wants that Shaftoe apparently _did_ share with Jack, after all.  
  
"How c'n you be sure?"  Confirmed those wants might be (Jack was sure he could frig himself for years on the memory of Jack Shaftoe's face in the moment of his bliss, all focused on Jack himself), but it wouldn't hurt to hear more about 'em, surely.

"Darlin', Jack Shaftoe's been coming to see me for years now, and we've had some fine times, but he ain't never wanted in the backdoor, and he ain't never brought another man with him.  'Specially not one he couldn't take his eyes off all throughout."  
  
Jack flushed with delight, and Flora laughed sweetly and patted his cheek.  
  
"'S'alright.  You were staring at him like a week-unfed dog at a butcher's yard."  Jack blanched, but it seemed Flora was the most forthright of the three people who not-so-long ago occupied the little room.  "Oh, come off it," she giggled.  "He's worth staring at.  And you're no prim little miss to be shamed by't.  That was you rogering me but good not ten minutes gone, was it not?  And that while a man you're mad for buggered me and the two of you gawked like all get out at each other."  
  
Jack laughed and acknowledged, "Aye, Miss Flora, you've the right of it."  
  
"I know I have," she nodded firmly.  "S'just a shame I'll miss out on two such _fine_ customers," she drawled, and leered creditably at Jack's naked body.  
  
He'd never been averse to being admired.  
  
"Well, seein' as you've been so accommodating this fine evening to me and my friend, and seein' as how you've suggested such flattering things vis-à-vis the future state of affairs between myself and said friend, and seein' as how you've likewise suggested such flattering things vis-à-vis my own person; seein' as all of this is above and beyond the duties for which we'd engaged your lovely self and I've some time to wait before I follow the excellent Mr. Shaftoe (as per your own clever plan), what say I give you a small thank you gift before you go back downstairs?"  
  
For a moment, she didn't seem to understand him, but he slipped his hand down between her legs, and she caught on quick enough.  And was happy to accept his _remerciement_ , too.  
  
  
[][][]  
  
  
By the time Jack was making his way through the London maze toward the room he was currently sharing with Shaftoe, the sky was starting to pink.  The night folk were disappearing into their bolt-holes, and were replaced by the wafting smells of bakers at their morning loaves.  
  
And yet, despite a night of rowdiness both within and without closed doors, fatigue was the last thing in Jack's body.  He walked in a daze of anticipation and dread.  Of fear that Shaftoe might be run off for good or might resort to violence 'pon Jack's (much-valued) person.  And, at once, of wild, thrilling hope that Flora'd said true; that Shaftoe had somehow come 'round to wanting Jack.  
  
What did not occur to him was that Shaftoe'd have made up his mind on the subject quite so quick as to be sitting in the windowseat of their room when Jack unlocked and entered it.  
  
He closed the door quietly behind him, impatient with himself at how damned nervous he felt.  
  
"'Lo, Jack."  
  
That was Shaftoe.  
  
"'Lo."  
  
Two could play that game.  
  
Or maybe they couldn't, because Jack had always been crap at taciturnity.  
  
"Look, I've no int'rest in snarling things up when there's no need for snarl.  I'll tell you I–"  
  
"Snarl?"  Shaftoe interrupted him, turning his head from the window to look Jack in the face.  "Oh no, I don't think things need be snarled one bit."  
  
Jack hesitated.  "How's that then?"  
  
"I should think it'd all be plain to you by now.  Fact, I think it was plain to you well afore it was plain to me."  Shaftoe sounded bemused.  Bemused; not violent, not angry.  
  
"If it's plain, then let's have it out plain, eh?"  
  
Shaftoe chuckled and scrubbed bashfully at the back of his neck with one hand.  "I 'spect you're right an' all.  I'm just not 'customed to appealing to fellows."  
  
If the sun could rise in someone's chest, then Jack's was due East.  He wanted to dance and caper and leap and crow, and some bit of this must've shown on his outside, for Shaftoe laughed a sweet, embarrassed laugh and went red as though he'd sat all day in the rays of the sun in Jack's heart.  
  
Jack started swiftly across the room to Shaftoe, but slowed as he neared, shy of pushing Shaftoe too fast or far beyond his desires.  Because Jack's... well, they'd been a-building for months now, hadn't they?  And Shaftoe's were new-found.

Jack reached a halting, hesitant hand to Shaftoe's warm shoulder and said, quietly, "You may not know it, but I'm sure you've been appealing to plenty of fellows.  For years, mate."  
  
Shaftoe laughed nervously (but didn't, oh thank you thank you, remove Jack's hand) and ducked his face away as he answered with a mumbled, "Not 'customed to wooing 'em, then."  
  
_Oh, Jack_ , Jack thought.  And then said it, fond as ever fond was, and lifting Shaftoe's chin up as he did.  "Oh, Jack!  I don't need a jot of wooing.  I'm yours for the taking."  
  
And though his own face flushed scarlet at such sentiment, he looked Shaftoe in the eye as he said it, and kept a hand under his chin, and leaned in slowly to a kiss.  
  
A lush little sip of a kiss that, gratifyingly, produced a purr of pleasure from Jack Shaftoe, who returned it, tentative at first, but only for a moment.  A moment, and then his purr grew claws and became a rumble and even, one might say (and Jack was such a one, as Shaftoe gripped his hips and drew him close), a growl, and his lips pressed harder and his tongue licked into Jack's mouth.  
  
How thrilling and heavenly was this?  To be kissing gorgeous Jack Shaftoe.  To have Shaftoe kissing back, here of his own free will, no girl between 'em, the very thing Jack had wanted most for months now, and the very thing he'd given up on ever having.  
  
Well, p'raps not the thing he'd wanted _most_.   _That_ thing he had sudden cause to think of as Shaftoe rose to his feet and tugged Jack to him, bringing their hips tight together.  Jack loosed a short, sharp moan at the feel of Shaftoe's prick hard 'gainst his own.   _Hard_ 'gainst his own.  
  
And, wonder of wonders, there was Shaftoe moaning a matching sound of desire.  Moaning and digging his fingers into Jack's hips, into Jack's arse, and yanking him forward again and again and again, and the shocks of twisty pleasure that shivered up Jack's spine from his cock at the friction made him gasp, head buzzing with it.  
  
"Not to put too fine a point on it," Shaftoe growled against Jack's mouth, "but I think I might kill a man to fuck you right now."  
  
Jack's hips stuttered out of time at the well of want that sprung inside him at the idea.  "Mmmmm, _yes_.  Oh Christ, yes!"  
  
"Only Jack—damnation, the feel of you!—I ain't never done this with a bloke.  'Zit different to doin' it with a girl?  Buggery, that is?"  
  
The word _buggery_ , in Jack Shaftoe's deep, rough voice, as applied to an act about to be perpetrated on his own body, made Jack wobbly.  The ongoing rhythm of mutual pelvic thrusting didn't solidify matters.  Well, it solidified one or (fortuitously) two particular matters.  But to a point where Jack felt his release coming on.  And if Shaftoe wanted to fuck him, then Jack sure as hellfire wanted to come with Shaftoe's prick in his arse.  
  
Perhaps a slowing was called for.  
  
"And how d'you know I know what I'm doing?" Jack asked teasingly, drawing away (only a little—how contrary to the direction in which he wanted to be going) from the radiant heat of Shaftoe's body.  
  
"Oh, come off it," Shaftoe answered, laughing and gasping for his breath.  "A lad pretty as you must've done this dozens o' times."  
  
"I am not pretty!" Jack insisted, pouting.  Prettily.  "Handsome, that's me.  Devilish handsome.  Pretty's for girls."  
  
"Aye, pretty's for girls," Shaftoe agreed.  "But not just. 'Cause look... oh, look at you, my friend."  Jack couldn't at the moment, but the way Shaftoe was doing it suggested he looked nice.  
  
"You _are_ pretty, dammit!" Shaftoe maintained.  "Your eyes're– and your hair's– and there're ladies who'd kill for cheekbones like that."  
  
The fervent words were pleasing, but even more so was the slightly desperate way Shaftoe touched each of the parts he spoke of.  "And I'm no poet about it."  He stopped, casting about for the words.  "But for sure to God, I've never seen any girl with a mouth half so perfect as yourn."  
  
He touched that part, too.  With his own mouth, the perfection of which might not have been the current topic, but which smiled against Jack's lips and opened to Jack's tongue and suddenly Jack didn't mind being called pretty.  Not one bit.  And the idea of slowing things down lost every scrap of its appeal.  
  
He drew back from the sweet sucking drag of Shaftoe's kiss and pulled toward the bed, towing Shaftoe—who refused to let go of Jack's hips—along.  
  
"Well, since you flatter so... _pretty_ ," he batted his eyelashes with theatrickal flare, "I'll fess up an' allow as the principal of the thing is much the same with a belle or a bloke, and I say it because I may have done this with a few others of past acquaintance.  Though I've never wanted to so much as I do right now."  And while Jack could easily think of several occasions on which he'd uttered the same or similar words to other, quite different men; saying them to Shaftoe, Jack meant them more'n he ever had. 

"Let me see you, Jack Shaftoe," Jack murmured, and he plucked at the man's shirt, never tucked back in since his hasty departure from Flora's bed.

Shaftoe snorted at him, and said, "You've seen me bare heaps o' times," but obediently raised his arms overhead for Jack to tug off the rough cotton.  And it was true, too, but oh, Shaftoe'd never been bare (nor even midway so) like this.  Where Jack could look his fill at the swoops and divots of muscle beneath that smooth cornsilk skin.

Shaftoe froze in suspicious attitude when Jack came forth with no immediate praise.  
  
"What's that look mean?" he asked charily.  
  
Jack rolled his eyes.  "It means I want you, you blind dolt."  
  
Ah, now _that_ look on Shaftoe's face was one Jack knew well as weather for all the times he'd adopted it himself.  That was a preen, and no mistake.  
  
"You've been lookin' at me that way for a long time," Shaftoe stated, frowning in stagey confusion.  
  
"Aye."  
  
"Am I to infer, then, that you've been coveting my arse all these months?"  
  
"Aye," affirmed Jack, and gave Shaftoe a lingering lusty look up and down as he said, "but you should also infer that I've been coveting the rest of you, as well."  
  
The heat and humour in Shaftoe's wide blue eyes were unmistakable now.  "Oh?  Any parts in specific?"  
  
Oh, Jack was more than happy to play _this_ game.  "Mhm.  I've been coveting your wide hard shoulders and your long lean legs."  He smoothed his hands across those shoulders and ran them up the front of Shaftoe's thighs.  
  
"Anything else?" asked Shaftoe the Shameless.  
  
"Yes, hussy," Jack scolded fondly.  He went on caressing body parts as he continued, "I've been coveting your bare chest an' its tight brown nipples.  I've been coveting your great strong hands on my body.  I've been coveting your skin, Jack, and the way it'd feel 'gainst mine.  I've been–"  
  
Shaftoe cut him off.  "You know it's a dirty great sin, all this covetousness.  Bible tells us 'n all."

One could argue his moralising was undermined by the way his hands, followed avidly by his eyes, were now sliding over Jack's body; skating down his arms, slipping up his back, testing the feel of his planes and angles with soft pressure.  
  
One _could_ argue these things, but why anyone would want to argue when he had Jack Shaftoe's big keen hands untucking his shirt and reaching underneath it to pet his chest was a thought Jack couldn't, for the moment, compass.  
  
"I know it," Jack purred, and sighed at the feel of his nipples tingling tight under Shaftoe's caress.  "I know it, and I mind it to the sum of zero.  'Cause, oh, you're made for sin.  An so'm I.  So I'll go right on coveting and sinning and, mmmm, thinkin' 'bout you, mate.  For it's the most delicious sin I've ever known.  Well, second most."  
  
"If you're going to argue thusly, I can't bring myself to disagree," Shaftoe said, low and rumbling, lifting Jack's hair away from his ear to lean in and whisper, "Tell me what else you covet.  Tell me all the filthy things you've been wanting."  
  
"Aahhh, God, there're so many.  F'you can do it, I want to do it with you, and then—urmph" (muffled as Shaftoe pulled Jack's shirt up over his head) "then invent something else, just to have more.  I want to have you naked in bed, friggin' and frottin' against me in a room full of light an' mirrors so's I can see every angle of it.  I want—oh, that again" (Shaftoe dragged an obliging fingernail hard over Jack's nipple) "I want to kneel to you and tease at your prick with my mouth until you're beggin' me to suck you.  Christ crucified, yes, touch me!" (Shaftoe'd undone Jack's breeches and now slid his rough-skinned palm around Jack's aching cock) "Like that, Jack, yes, fuck!  I want so much from you— _nngh_ —so much."

"Fucking?" growled Shaftoe, bass and vibrating in his chest where it pressed against Jack's.  "You want fucking?"  The sound seemed somehow to emanate from the branding heat of Shaftoe's yard as it pushed in quick, insistent rhythm against Jack's hip.

"Ohhh.  Oh yes.  Fucking's so _exactly_ what I want from you.  Now.  Right now."

"Then doff your breeches and find me some slick, and I'll give you what you want," Shaftoe panted, gratifyingly desperate in the removal of his own boots and trowsers, which left Jack stripping to his skin with more speed than grace and urgently scanning the room for something to ease the way.

The early sun through the window had become enough light to see by, and that lamp oil (ah, it was even obligingly warm) could be put to better uses at the moment, certes.  Jack snuffed the lamp.

And when he turned round, there was a sight that'd make a king beggar himself.  For there was Jack Shaftoe, bare an' bold like a creamy-skinned, golden-haired Ganymede, flushed and panting and waiting, prick in hand, on the bed, where there'd be no top'n'tailin' it today.

Today there'd be the two of 'em, the Pair of Jacks, and there'd be Shaftoe's fingers, slick with lamp oil, breaching Jack's body one at a time.  There'd be two shocked and gasping faces as those fingers found a somewhere inside Jack that none of his prior partners had ever discovered.  There'd be Jack, crying out and spending at the shivering blossom of pleasure that effloresced at the first touch of that wondrous place.  There'd be Shaftoe, laughing at Jack's _going off like a green boy_ , and Jack's breathless _wait'll **you** feel it, mate_ and his returning cockstand as Shaftoe kept on petting that miraculous spot.  And then, finally, there'd be Jack Shaftoe's a-mazed face as he sunk into Jack for the first time and as he pushed in and pulled out slow and slow and then faster; as he lost himself in pleasure inside Jack; as he distractedly clapped a hand round Jack's reawakened prick; and as they both shouted and shuddered and slumped together, replete.

 

[][][]  
  
  
And thus began the next chapter in the tale of the Pair of Jacks.  It was, at the time, and would be, in future, Jack's favourite chapter.  The one that would still prove capable of shorting his breath and stiffening his cock years later, after many more chapters had been written into his book of days.

For the better part of the next year, Jack and Jack went on with their lives as they had been.  They argued and schemed and even went off Vagabonding, for Jack insisted that if Shaftoe wanted the epithet, he had to earn it.

Only now, their arguments like as not (like, really, for it happened far more than it didn't) ended in enthusiastic bodily transports; their scheming machinations were littered with innuendo and escalating teases that led to... well... transports; and their travels significantly lengthened Jack's personally-kept list of places in which his body'd been transported enthusiastically.

It was a time of delight to Jack.  He was young and strong and fine-looking and tremendously in love.  With Jack Shaftoe at his side (and at his back, and at his front, and at a variety of less-probable locations, as well), all was right with the world, and Jack never wanted it to end.

But end it did, though it took some time to do so.

The end began in an ale-house in Dublin, when a serving wench began flirting shamelessly with Jack Shaftoe.

Now, on its own, that was nothing.  There was hardly an ale-house, inn, tavern, pub, or ken the pair of 'em had been to where one or t'other wasn't flirted with shamelessly.  'Twas a fact of life for two such well-favoured fellows.  Everyone had his burdens to bear.

But on that night... Shaftoe flirted back.  He grinned his dimpled grin and crinkled up his blue eyes in mirth and stretched out the muscled length of his body a good deal more than was necessary.  A very great deal more.

Jack knew all these techniques.  They'd been practised 'pon his own person.  And so he likewise knew how very effective they were at catching the attention of their intended object.  He was appreciatively and (to his mind) meritoriously accustomed to being that object.  And was _not_ accustomed to the sharp, putrescent stab that ran through his chest at seeing this red-haired cow receiving _his_ , _Jack's_ , rightful due.

Later, upstairs, Shaftoe was full of _That Mary Dolores, she was a beaut, eh, Jack?_ and _Bet we could talk her up here.  Have her how we had Flora that once, remember?_

But Jack wanted none of it, and though, in bed half an hour later, riding Shaftoe's cock, Jack was certain he had the man fully engaged in the moment, still, there was an anger and a fear in him that would not be dispelled; and he took a fell joy in slowing his straddle-legged rise and fall and in cruelly controlling Shaftoe's pleasure until the begging and teasing lost their playfulness and something dark and twisted smoked through the space between them, where before had been only light.

 

[][][]

 

The next morning, Jack awoke contrite, and provided Shaftoe an extremely thorough and fellative apology.  And when that handsome dimpled face was smiling again, Jack was so relieved that he agreed to stay a week more in Baile Átha Cliath.

But it became two weeks and three and then a month and then more.  And all of it was an increasing torment to Jack.  For it was a month and more in which Shaftoe seemed only to want time in Mary Dolores's company.  He sat in the common room for hours on end, and Jack bitterly watched him grin every time she exaggerated the swing of her hips as she walked away from their table.

On the slattern's days off, Shaftoe insisted she show _Me and my friend Jack, here_ (friend! what a paltry and ignominious shadow of a word) the city sights.  His teasing suggestion that they bring her to their bed was not only repeated, but expounded upon at length, and a cold fiendish kernel of a notion took root in Jack's heart that some of Shaftoe's more exuberant reactions in that arena were no longer the product of his own, of Jack's, ministrations, but of the thought of what this female might have to offer. 

Jack's desperation to keep Shaftoe was a miserable, pathetic thing, and well he knew it.  He despised himself for his manipulations and poutings, and for the way he soon couldn't exchange two words with Mary Dolores (who did, it must be admitted, make every effort towards amity with the partner of her new friend, Jack Shaftoe) before excusing himself from the room, unable to watch that laughing blue gaze that had once belonged only to Jack bestowed with such fond warmth on someone else.

He was heartsore in those weeks, Jack was.  Diresome unhappy and so in love he was sick with it.  And so, finally, terribly, he acquiesced to Shaftoe's desire and tall, fiery-haired Mary Dolores came upstairs with them and into their bed.

They did have her as they'd had Flora between them, just as Shaftoe'd suggested.  But it was Shaftoe before her—touching her sure and sweet, licking at her quim in adoration, then sliding his cock into her with a shuddering and reverent sigh—and Jack behind, perfectly placed to watch it all unfolding in front of him and loathing himself for how hard he was at the sight of Jack Shaftoe in ecstasy, no matter that he'd barely touched Jack and was deriving his pleasure from another source entirely.

Mary Dolores, for her part... well, Jack couldn't blame her for how excitedly she responded to Shaftoe's attentions.  He knew the feel of those fingers and that mouth and that yard as well as he knew his own, and they were all of them glorious.

She looked at him once, near the end, as Shaftoe's rhythm was disintegrating into the short, sharp thrusts Jack knew (how well he knew) meant he was nearing his peak.  She turned her face to meet his where he sat behind her, buggering her half-heartedly and wishing Shaftoe in her place, and she doubtless saw the naked misery on his phiz.  And though Shaftoe's fingers were busy between her legs along with his prick, and she looked half out of her head with the sense-pleasure of it all, she saw Jack's anguish and feelingly squeezed one of her hands over his where it held her hip.  How wretched, to not even have the comfort of hating the woman stealing his Shaftoe away!  Jack squeezed her hip beneath their joined hands, buried his face in her shoulder, and let his tears slide, hidden, down her back. 


	3. Chapter 3

It took him a few days to steel himself to it, but Jack told Shaftoe he was off back to London.  Until the very moment when Shaftoe's reply left his mouth, Jack hoped.  Hoped that Shaftoe'd come back with him, that he'd leave Mary Dolores behind, that he'd catch Jack up in his great strong arms and hold him and tell him that the Pair of Jacks would never be split.

But Shaftoe only said, "Well, all right then, mate.  I'll be back soon."  He laid a hand fondly on Jack's shoulder and smiled at him, true and pure, and Jack was forced to turn violently away from it, to keep his eyes dry.

London was a cold place without Shaftoe's cheering, cheerful presence.  Everywhere Jack went, everyone he spoke to, every street corner he passed; everything reminded him of their escapades.  And so, when word got out that a Captain John Tobias of the _Black Pearl_ was in the market for a navigator, Jack applied himself in person.

He'd always had a gypsy's head for directions and distance, and figures didn't trouble him none.  Plus he could read and write, which put his list of relevant skills at an important two lines longer than most of the other men vying for the position.

When Tobias offered him the place, he took it, and promised to be there overmorrow when the _Pearl_ was set to sail.

And that would have been that, were it not for the fact that Jack Shaftoe chose the next morning, of all times, to return to London.

He found Jack still abed in the room they'd last shared, though it was gone noontide.

"Jack," he burst in, all wild windblown hair and red cheeks; painfully handsome in the buttery mid-day light.  "Get yerself up, you lazy sod.  I have news!"

Jack looked up at him balefully, last night's rum still on his head.  Couldn't Shaftoe have stayed away three days more and not re-opened all of Jack's hurts?  "Good to see you, too, mate," he said pointedly.  Shaftoe laughed and kicked the door shut behind him.

"What's your news?" asked Jack.  "Wait.  Let me guess.  It's something to do with a six-foot Irish lass we both know."

"Aye."  Shaftoe was bouncing up and down on his toes in his impatience to tell Jack whatever it was he had to say, and it was so utterly opposite to Jack's current state of miserable lethargy that he couldn't help but laugh drily.

"Let's have it then," he said, sitting up against the headboard.

"I'm marryin' her!"

A deafening drone filled Jack's ears.  Maybe 'twas the sound of all his life force being sucked inexorably toward Jack Shaftoe, who must be a pit for the stuff with how vitally alive he looked.

"Well, bully for you," spat Jack, full of bile.  "Happiest of happies an' all that."

Shaftoe frowned.  "What?  Ain't you glad for me?" 

"Glad?!   _Glad_ for you?" Jack snapped.  He leapt to his feet and stalked toward Shaftoe, barefoot in only his breeches.  "Why the _fuck_ should I be fuckin' _glad_ for you?"

"Ah, come on.  Don't be that way.  S'not like I had much choice in the matter.  I got her in trouble, as the squirearchy'd say.  An' she and her oversized, brutish menfolk don't seem inclined to take _No_ for an answer."

"'Scuse me, Jack.  I thought I just heard you say you hadn't much choice in the matter," Jack sneered, glaring up into Shaftoe's face.  "I'd beg to differ on that score.  A man's usually got some choice 'bout where he dips his wick.  An' you with such a willing and non-spawn-begetting dippin' place, too."  He angrily grabbed Shaftoe's wrist and slapped one rough hand to his own arse.

Shaftoe jerked his hand away with a grimace.  Somehow, that hurt worse than everything else.  That Shaftoe'd spurn even _touching_ Jack, let alone allow how much he'd loved (had he only seemed to love—no, no man could feign such bliss) fucking him all these months.  Jack turned away, despairing.

"What are you on about?" Shaftoe asked in perplexed frustration.  "Have to say, you're sounding mighty female about the whole thing."

"But I'm not a female."  A bitter laugh escaped Jack's throat, and he turned back toward Shaftoe with an acerbic and accusatory stare.  "That's the whole problem, innit?  If I were a girl, you wouldn't be leaving me, would you?"

Shaftoe gave Jack a broad, conciliatory smile, as though he suddenly understood Jack's distress.  "Who said anything 'bout leavin', you silly creature?  Mary D's coming here to London.  We'll find some rooms somewhere and you an' I'll still be mates, like always."

Jack's laughter shrilled hysterical.  "Mates?  Is that what we've been?  Is that what we've been this past year while you've wittered on about how no one else's ever shown you such pleasure?  While you've been incapable of staying out of my bed?  Was it as my _mate_ , all those times you said you had to have me or you'd die of it?"

Shaftoe's face had turned solemn and sad.  Jack looked at him and knew, of a sudden, that he was about to receive an answer to those questions he'd though entirely rhetorical.  Felt his heart severed silently in his chest as he realised he knew what Shaftoe'd say even before he said, quiet and heart-felt and true,

"Aye.  Mates is what it's always been for me."

His hand twitched forward toward Jack, but Jack flinched from it, and Shaftoe let his arm fall.

"It–  It's been– It's been damn fine fucking," Shaftoe offered.  But it was a milksop offering, and it soothed Jack not an ounce.  "'Tis true I've never had your equal.  But... well... men fuck about with their mates."  Jack winced at Shaftoe's placations.  "It ain't like with a girl.  It's–" at which point Shaftoe must've cottoned to it in full, for his face flooded red and he swallowed, hard.  "You... d'you mean... ain't it been mates to you?"

Jack, too distraught to speak, tic'd his head _No_.  All his bright and shining visions of a rollicking, rich life with Jack Shaftoe lined up to mock him with how vivid they'd been not two months back; with how sure he'd been of Shaftoe's regard equalling his own.  And they'd all been lies.  Jesus!  He turned his back, wanting desperately to shutter his cursed face away from that horrified sympathy in Shaftoe's eyes.

"I–  God, I'd no idea you–  I never meant–  Oh God, I'm _sorry_ , Jack!"  Jack felt the warmth behind him as Shaftoe drew near.  Drew near and abandoned words, instead affording Jack his earnest friendship in physical form.

Jack cringed at those arms around him.  He'd not be pitied in this, for fuck's sake!  But though he struggled to pull away from Shaftoe's embrace, the inescapable truth was that, in spite of everything, this was where Jack loved most in the world to be, and when Shaftoe hung on and turned Jack round to face him and clasped Jack tight to his chest, Jack gave up and clung to the man he adored.

"Bastard!" he choked out into Shaftoe's shoulder, and Shaftoe answered him silently with a hand petting at the back of his head.

"Fuckin' bastard," he sobbed, and couldn't hold the massive ache inside his throat a second more.  He let himself go, keening and wailing and beating at Shaftoe's solid chest with his fists.  And Shaftoe merely stood there, silently holding him, and let Jack exorcise his pain until he was left weak and hoarse and exhausted.

A numbness had settled over the entire room; a fog of grey drear that stuffed Jack's head like flocking when he finally quieted and stood still again for the final time in Jack Shaftoe's warm encircling arms.

"I love you, Jack," he breathed, this one and only time, into the rough cloth against his face, quiet enough that Shaftoe'd never hear.  Louder, he said, "I'm leavin'.  I've a place on a privateer crew leaving tomorrow."

Shaftoe gently put Jack away from him at arm's length, studying his tear-streaked face.  "It's best for you, ain't it?"

"Aye.  That it is."

"Then go.  Go and be free an' easy.  Like a lark.  Like a sparrow.  Like you was when I met you."  Shaftoe whispered a fingertip over Jack's cheek, and pulled a tear from it.  "There's none like you, Jack.  You're the best friend I've known, and I wish with all I've got that I could promise you more'n that."  He pressed a hard, close-lipped kiss to Jack's mouth, and when he pulled back, Jack stared at him, memorising Jack Shaftoe's face, for he knew he'd never see it again.

 

{}{}{}

 

And he hadn't, Anamaria knows.  Not until this morning in that room in Wapping.  Must've been over twenty years, an' she's sailed (and slept) with Jack a fair number of 'em, and still she's never heard one hisp of a mention of this Jack Shaftoe.

She looks at Jack as he lies here in her bed sleeping, finally, after exhausting himself in the telling of his awful, aching tale.  He looks worn, even at rest.  The lines on his forehead hold their furrows still, and he twitches in the grip of some dream.  Or nightmare.  Could be either.

'Tis a terrible thing, to love an' not be loved the same in return.  She's had her turns with it, but she hasn't the constancy of Jack Sparrow's heart, it seems, to stay true to such a love year in, year out.

Hah!  Jack Sparrow.  Constant.  Not a chain of words she thought she'd ever link.  But Jack's nothin' if not a man of surprises.  It was only t'other day she was musing over how Jack never let the heart part of him fly free like the rest.  And now she sees it ain't that he chooses to keep that portion locked down tight.  It's that it ain't his to send out at will.  His heart's fixed, all right.  But it's fixed on another who won't never give Jack a heart back in return.

She lays herself down beside him, curls into his side, can't help but want to offer him whatever comfort he might take from her presence.  She 'spects they'll have words in the morning, but she's damned if she knows what they'll be.  Best be ready for 'em with as much sleep as she can close her eyes on.

But Jack surprises her again in the morning.  Because when the early sun starts fingerin' its way 'cross her cabin, and they're both awake beside one another, she turns to him and says, "Jack, you got to talk to him," and instead of arguing, he nods his head and says, "I know I do.  As usual, Ana, you are assuredly, preternaturally right."

So it's without argument of any kind that Jack readies himself (if he takes more care with his appearance than is even _his_ wont, Anamaria certainly ain't going to say him nay) and the two of 'em set off again for the stew where Jack Shaftoe awaits.

When they arrive, she sees Jack steel himself, and they enter the room together.  
  
It's empty.  Completely empty.  There's no Jack Shaftoe.  There's no nothin'.  
  
Anamaria flares with vindictive anger on behalf of her Captain.  This cowardly Shaftoe won't even show his face to talk with Jack, after all that he's done to the man!  How dare he?  
  
She wants to speak her mind here to Jack, but his face is open so wide, like the sea horizon weeks out from land, and for a moment, she's embarrassed to be witness to such a mess of utter disappointment and sweet relief and devastated hurt.  
  
That's too private, that is.  She turns away, to lend Jack some time.  But when she turns, she notices the room ain't _all_ empty.  Because in the middle of the bare floor, unmistakably left here for them as though this were some Arabian auction, are two small rectangular pieces of paper, aligned side-by-side.  She squats to inspect them.  
  
They're playing cards.  
  
It's a pair of jacks.  
  
She minds the story Jack told her last night, bout him and this good-for-nothing Shaftoe who don't know a good thing when it's worshipping him in his bed each night.  She minds that a Pair of Jacks is how they called themselves, years back.  And she knows this pair of card-jacks to be a message from the man-Jack who ain't presently in this room.  
  
"Jack," she says, softly and without turning, giving him time to cover that mask of boyish vulnerability with one more typifyin' of the un-dauntable captain of the _Black Pearl_.  "Jack, look what he's left for you."  And she hands him the cards, and can't help but look into his face as he takes them.  
  
It shows wild and elated hope, is what it shows.  And Anamaria knows just what that's a hope of.  Jack's letting his soft and tender heart—so much nearer the surface than usual after all the past-wakening he's been doing—lead his head.  She sees, plain as potatoes, that he's taken this as a sign of Shaftoe's rekindled affections.  
  
And though it pains her to bust such pretty phant'sy, she ain't so muddled by this that she can't see the other possibilities in this ambiguous message: Shaftoe's simply acknowledging joint negotiations between the two like-named fellows; Shaftoe's sayin' a kind of a _Hello_ , but not lookin' to take things any farther; hell, for all she knows, Shaftoe's attempting to take advantage of Jack's regard for him to turn a pretty profit on this business transaction.  
  
"Jack, you know you can't do nothin' 'bout those cards."  If Jack Sparrow's heart is going to eclipse his brain, then Anamaria will make sure to speak for Reason.  Jack needs her to.  The _Pearl_ needs her to.  
  
Just as she knew he would, Jack blazes with outrage.  
  
"Ana!" he cries, "The cards are him an' me!  He wants–"  
  
"You don't know what he wants," she insists.  "You got no way of knowing it.  He could be playin' you.  It could be a lay.  We came here so's you could talk to him, aye, but he ain't here to talk.  So what we've to do is our business for the ship.  And what's best for the _Pearl_ and her crew is to take these dealings off else an' not get mixed up with this Shaftoe who won't come and talk to you face-à-face."  
  
She sees the moment when his brain takes over from its lub-dubbing cousin.  It looks an awful lot like how she imagines a heart would look, cracking in two.  Oh, it does hurt to see inside Jack Sparrow's wicked, flashing armour.  To see that he's just a man hidden away in there.  A man who's loved and lost and loves still, just like anyone.  
  
"Aye," he whispers.  "Aye, you're right.  I can't know what he meant by't.  I s'pose it's better I never know."  His eyes look huge and lost as a puppy's.  "We'll fence our goods with Jake the Monkey instead.  Be a love and take care of that for me, eh?"  
  
She wants to tell him not to try and muster his smile right now, because that there is a pathetic, sickly-lookin' thing.  But she thinks he might not know as such, so she keeps her peace, and says only, "Aye, Cap'n.  I'll see it done.  Let's go back to the ship.  C'mon."  
  
Jack's staring at the cards in his hand, glancing back and forth from one jack to t'other.  Like he's deciding which one to pick.  Like picking the right one'll win him a prize.  A prize shaped an awful lot like Jack Shaftoe.  
  
She gently reaches over and takes the two cards from Jack's hands.  He lets her, and stares blankly as she places 'em back on the floor how they was.  Then she heads out through the door, but Jack's rummaging in his coat until he pulls out a deck of cards and goes searching through for somethin' specific.  
  
When he finds it, he goes to the cards on the floor and does something down there before standing, briskly, as though he's suddenly made up his mind to something, and striding from the room.  
  
Anamaria follows him out the door, with only a quick glance behind her to show that he's left the Queen of Hearts on the floor, thoroughly separating the two Jacks.


End file.
